The Texas Department of Public Safety, which also has a say on the forms, had in 2008 agreed to drop the numbers.Then earlier this year, DPS said it wanted to keep them for law enforcement purposes.

Now, according to the Texas Department of Transportation staff recommendation for a new form that leaves off the space for phone numbers, “The Department of Public Safety has determined that, although the phone number can be helpful for follow up crash investigation issues, it is not vital to the form.

“The need for and uses of the phone number do not outweigh the privacy concerns that the collection, storage, and release of the phone number creates,” TXDOT staff said.

DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said by email, “The timely adoption of the revised form to facilitate the implementation of scheduled improvements to the Crash Records Information System is of paramount importance, and we are confident the concerns we have previously expressed regarding the contents of the form can be adequately addressed in other ways.”

Deleting the space for phone numbers from crash reports wouldn’t prevent an investigating officer from putting the phone number into the narrative portion of the report or other, separate notes, TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott said.

The new form will be used starting Jan. 1, if approved by the Transportation Commission.